


A Thousand Truths

by TiggyMalvern



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Gore, Do not post to other sites, M/M, Minor Molly Graham/Will Graham, Murder Husbands, Murder Husbands Big Bang, Pining, red dragon arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:21:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29077779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiggyMalvern/pseuds/TiggyMalvern
Summary: Hannibal wants to know why Will testified as he did at Hannibal’s trial. Will has many different answers. Red Dragon Arc and beyond…
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 75
Collections: MHBB2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you once again to the mods of the Murder Husbands Big Bang for organising all of this.
> 
> Thank you to Nin Potato for stepping in as a fill artist, always a very stressful thing to do with a limited time frame! Here are the links to her art, so you can go and tell her directly how much you love her work.  
> [Nin's art on tumblr](https://ninpotato.tumblr.com/post/641717496860262400/they-dont-see-what-i-see)  
> [Nin's art on instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/CKqPTFBl315/?igshid=cvofe0dlzgoz)
> 
> And thank you, as so often, to [dreamerinsilico](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico) for being an invaluable beta.

He wraps his tie around itself, his hands following the long-familiar pattern. The silk blend catches on the rough skin of his fingers as it slides into the shape of the knot.

It’s easier now, when he has access to a mirror.

He doesn’t own many suits. This is the same one he wore at his own trial, when his every muscle was suspended on the edge of rigidity, his eyes on Hannibal striding the length of the courtroom to take the stand.

That was a year and a half ago. It feels only weeks in the past despite everything that’s happened between, and yet it’s too hard to cast his mind back to a time before Hannibal was woven into his life. To remember living a prosaic life of work and dogs when he wasn’t yet aware of Hannibal’s presence in the world. 

The harsh bite of night air is immediate and sharp in his mind, as if Hannibal knelt in the snow outside his house only moments before, the glare of the lights stark on his battered face.

Will’s hands have stilled part way through the motions, his fingers loose around the soft hang of the fabric. 

The tie is different this time, the coil of it at his throat newer and simpler. He’s shunned the diagonal stripes suggestive of a banker or a child at some exclusive school (and heartily encouraged by his defence lawyer on exactly those grounds). It’s a solid colour, dark – not black with the associated air of attending somebody’s funeral, just subdued. The very opposite of attention-seeking.

Winston gives a soft whine down by his thigh, head tipped slightly to the right, and Will reaches down and ruffles through the softness of his fur around his ears. “It’s a weird kind of a day, huh, boy?”

There have been a lot of weird days lately. A lot of time lost in contemplation and whiskey, the dogs latching onto his mood, watching with heads laid low on their paws and wide, unsettled eyes.

He drags his attention back to the mirror and his hands to the fabric, the knot sliding upwards to tighten round his throat in a noose.

It’s uneven, and not in a deliberate, rakish, fashion icon way (a look he could never start to pull off anyway). It’s just crooked, and too small for the width of the tie. He should take it off and start again, but there won’t be anybody today he cares to impress.

He reaches for his glasses and sets them over his ears. He wears them so rarely now that the weight on his nose is almost strange, the frames obtrusive at the edge of his vision.

He pulls on his coat, gives the dogs one last pat on the head as they follow him to the door, and steps outside into the crisp early morning. 

He’s only made one public statement since he came back from Europe – that he has seven dogs and anybody trespassing on private land does so at their own risk. It’s been enough to keep the reporters away from his door, and he takes a slow breath, the chill of the air biting down through his pharynx and into his lungs. It would be a great day for a hike across the fields, inhaling the tang of the fresh shoots of grass crushed beneath his heels. Later, it will be a good afternoon for fish, when the sun warms the pools and the trout stir and circle and seek out prey.

Instead he crunches over the gravel and opens the door of the car. 

The inevitable pack of reporters lie in wait where his driveway meets the public road, and he’s forced to keep the Volvo to a slow crawl, the lenses protruding around him and the camera flashes rendering him half-blind through the glass. As he turns onto the highway, the cars and vans are already starting to peel away from their resting place on the verges, pushing into a badly spaced line behind him. 

He doesn’t check the mirror as he drives. He doesn’t have to. They’ll follow him all the way to the courthouse in Baltimore.


	2. Chapter 2

He has no job, nothing to hold him in Wolf Trap, and with the trial over, nothing to keep him near Baltimore either. 

The house was once his place of safety, isolated from the world and free of any judgement. Now it’s haunted - he still wakes to find Hannibal sitting by his bedside, still looks from his window and sees Hannibal drop to his knees where the light meets the darkness on the gravel of his driveway.

He sells it the same way he bought it, fully furnished as a single auction lot. The things he takes with him would have fitted in the Volvo, if that hadn’t been full of dogs, so he hires a small trailer for the rest of it.

He buys a cabin out at Moosehead Lake – big enough for the dogs with land for them to run, and close by the water for fishing. Quiet, with no close neighbours to ask questions or gossip about him to the press. Far enough from anywhere that matters that not even Freddie Lounds sticks around for long.

He doesn’t give his new address to anyone. Most of the people who might want it have the means to find out if they really want to, and he’s sure some of them will, but not telling them makes an arrow-sharp point.

He’s been living there a few months when someone speaks up behind him in line at the grocery store. “Well, this is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone else today who wears as much dog hair as I do.” He turns around and her smile’s even brighter than her voice. “I volunteer at the animal shelter, how about you?”

Her name’s Molly Foster and she’s a widow with a son, a kid as smart and caring and joyfully dog-enthusiastic as she is.

She’s open and outgoing, easy to read even in the lingering pain she attempts to bury as she rebuilds her life after her loss. There’s nothing about her Will doesn’t know within three hours of meeting her. Nothing that matters anyway.

She’s as different from Hannibal Lecter as it’s possible to imagine any human existing, and she makes Will smile.

*****

He knows it can’t last. He knows it before he ever hears about the Leeds and the Jacobis. He knows it before a letter arrives within an FBI package, his name curling across the inner envelope in a poised and achingly familiar script.

He knows it before a heavy black SUV rolls along his driveway, crushing the most recent fall of snow into ice, and trailing a stench of blood that overwhelms the combusted gasoline.

He knows it, but for a while it was nice to pretend.

*****

Hannibal hasn’t changed at all.

His hair’s shorter now, and he has several fine new scars from the beatings he took from Jack and then from Mason’s people, but three years in the BSHCI have left no impact on his bearing, or the careful control he exhibits over every minimalistic movement. He fills the space around him with words vivid and insightful, and comports himself as if he wore tailored suits and silk ties and pocket squares instead of the rough polycotton blend of an institution. He claims ownership even of this single room, larger and more luxurious than those afforded to any other, less notorious resident.

He speaks easily of the details of Will’s new life, as if he has the intrinsic right to know them and to share them. And Will feels the tug within him, the urge to respond, to lash out in angry denial.

Any loss of composure, any slip into emotion with Hannibal, is… dangerous.

He slides the file into the hatch, the lone physical connection between Hannibal’s cell and the outside world, but Hannibal makes no move to take it. “Family values may have declined over the last century, but we still help our families when we can.” Hannibal’s standing so close now, only the reflective clarity of a transparent polymer between them, and it offers Will no protection at all. “You are family, Will.”

Molly is his family, and Walter, his dogs in their cabin, their home. There’s no family here, not with this man who killed two of his children. 

Will turns away; he won’t grant him the satisfaction of any kind of acknowledgement.

“Why didn’t you testify at my trial, Will?”

Hannibal’s words halt him when he’s already halfway to the door. His voice flows around the room, gentle and… intimate, but the content is incongruously false.

Will turns back, his lips twisting in bitter jibe. “Confinement must be wreaking its havoc on your memory. I was there. I said what I needed to.”

“Yes, you did.” Hannibal’s head shifts into that familiar tilt, inquiry and invitation combined. “To some degree.”

“To my degree.”

“You could have said more.”

“I was tired of following along with other people’s plans.”

“And yet here you are.” Hannibal clasps his hands behind his back and blinks slow. “I’m certain you didn’t volunteer your services until Jack exerted his unsubtle form of pressure upon you.”

“And here you are, once again so concerned with my welfare, so determined to defend me against Jack’s malicious influence.” Will hears the snap in his own voice, knows the mistake of revealing _anything_ of himself to this man, yet his reactions, all of them, are so far outside of his control he might as well be tacking into a hurricane.

Hannibal doesn’t respond to the anger, of course he doesn’t; he’s still and calm and offering the slightest of smiles. “It seems we have come full circle.”

Will raises his eyebrows, looking away from Hannibal to the safety of the walls of shelves, sweeping his gaze ostentatiously over the room. “Your position in society was somewhat more prestigious the last time I consulted you on FBI cases.”

Hannibal ignores the taunt, the distasteful faux pas of speaking the unmentionable. “What is our progression to be this time, Will?” His voice drifts even lower, his accent sliding definition through each syllable. “Are we to make our way around the rest of the circle once more? From animosity to friendship, and beyond? We have done so twice already.”

Hannibal’s eyes are dark, steady, full of softness and that years-old offer of safety, of a space where anything Will says is accepted and embraced. Full of another offer, of so much more.

The room’s clammy, claustrophobic, the walls curling in around him; there’s no air left here to breathe, and Will drags his gaze back down to the metal, the clean, smooth handle of the hatch that holds the file. “I’ll be back in an hour to hear your thoughts, Doctor Lecter.”

He turns to leave and the door’s so distant, so very hard to reach, his soles loud upon the floorboards, each step echoing through the hollow space beneath. His skin prickles electricity with the stare he knows is fixed upon his back, the stare that won’t ever leave him until he’s been gone for hours, for miles.

And then he’s there, at the dark expanse of panels and their offered escape, a physical shape to grab and hold onto as he pulls the door open and there’s light and space and a corridor leading out and away…

He shuts the door after him and he can’t make it any further; he tips his head to the wall and closes his eyes, the flow of his breath a quiet rush through the tightness in his throat.

He has to protect himself, he knows that.

It feels more like he’s running away.


	3. Chapter 3

The second conversation with Hannibal is… easier. 

They’re talking about Jack’s moonstruck killer, the newly designated ‘shy boy’, exercising their intellect in the minutiae of crime scenes and motivations. It’s a clinical discussion of symbolism and victim choice, and Will’s steadied himself against Hannibal’s more personal interjections on his own life. Can tell himself his discomfort comes solely from his old turmoil at how easily he slides into the mindset of murder, how the understanding of a killer’s need for blood and death stirs within his bones.

Two weeks pass of the three the killer has graced them with, and Will’s visits are regular, their discussions growing longer. He’s surprised to find this place gives him no flashbacks to his own incarceration, but when he’s with Hannibal, they’re rarely inside the BSHCI. He’s transported by photographs and memory, exploring the houses and lives of the dead, or perched against the desk of a spacious office in Baltimore, surrounded by familiar curtains and chairs and bookshelves. The strange comfort and resonances of the past leech from their boxed away spaces into the present, and there are moments when Will has to drag himself back from that nostalgic miasma into the reality of what and where they are.

Alana was right. He’s going to need a longer spoon.

Then the third week is gone, and Will’s missed his chance. He met the Dragon, he was _right there_ and he let him slip away, back into the anonymity of a single thumb print with no name.

On the first night of the full moon, Will sits on the bed in his motel room, swamped in ugly patterns of brown and greys, sipping at a generous glass of cask strength bourbon. He has no plans to try and sleep and he can’t talk to Molly, not tonight, with everything around him intentionally neutral and bland while he waits for first light, when the phone will ring. When he’ll find out where there’s a house with bodies, of people and their pets.

He’s not expecting the call at three a.m., Jack telling him to sit tight, there’s an FBI car already on the way to pick him up, to bring him to the hospital, to bring him to Walter and Molly.

Alana should have known better, and so should he. Her five keys have never been enough.

*****

Hannibal shows no remorse; he’s not chastened one inch by the flare of Will’s anger.

It’s the same mistake Will’s made so often, over and over, believing he sees something tangibly human in Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal doesn’t even bother with an artful show of contrition, because Will still needs his help to catch the Dragon, now more than ever. He’s entirely matter-of-fact when he responds to Will’s attack. “Save yourself, kill them all. Then I gave him your home address.”

And in exchange for Will’s family, as if that makes his assault on them almost _reasonable_ , he offers up some fresh insight into the Dragon. “The building of a new body and the othering of himself, the splitting of his personality, all seem active and deliberate. He craves change.”

It clicks inside Will like the twist of a key; the planning behind the violence, the precise and careful execution. Less a killing, more a sacrifice, an honour. The Great Red Dragon rising up above the Jacobis, transforming them as he himself transforms into something stronger, brighter. “He didn’t murder those families. He changed them.” 

_’Blood and breath are only elements undergoing change to fuel your radiance.’_ A memory he sees resting behind Hannibal’s eyes exactly as it sits in his own, words spoken among the dance of shadows in a firelit dining room; the moment plays out upon the clear wall between them, gentle, encouraging, visceral, shared rooms in conjoined palaces. 

Hannibal’s next words are shaped soft, like a whisper. “Don’t you crave change, Will?”

He does. The cliff looms before him, the void calling him to jump.

He’s spent the last three years craving change; purposefully crafting and forcing change into his life. Changing into a family man, happily married, working a normal job that doesn’t involve suffering and bodies and murder. And Hannibal’s made certain he can never have that again.

Will drags himself away from the precipice, back into the world of people and lives and consequences that are _real._ Looks beyond the reflections and the ache of the past into a cell, a self-contained miniature world with no way out. “Probably not as much as you do.”

Hannibal’s gaze stays on Will, but he acknowledges his surroundings with a slight curve of his lips. “I chose my current fate, as you did yours. Though you could certainly have wielded influence over mine. Did you feel no temptation to say more at my trial, Will?”

Will has so many reasons to be bitter, and all that resentment is fuelled now into just one of them, a rush of bile that tightens his jaw and spears ice through his voice. “Jack Crawford and I were heroes, officers of the law assaulted and left near death during our daring attempt to arrest a vicious killer. The story fed to a hungry world by the highest authorities surrounding the FBI.” Kade Prurnell’s hasty back-pedalling on the arrest warrants for Jack and himself had been the bare beginning. By the time Will woke from surgery, political alchemy had transformed him from an underhanded criminal into a mythic combatant. “Those same authorities decided that having me testify in detail might serve to undermine the official narrative.”

The shift of Hannibal’s head is barely noticeable – most people other than Will would likely miss it. “You conceded to their purpose.”

“I adhered to my own,” Will corrects him. “Our interests were temporarily aligned.”

There’s a deepening of the lines around Hannibal’s eyes, the resurgence of his dry humour. “From my brief experience as an FBI contractor, I find their defensiveness tedious but unsurprising. I must confess, though, I have some curiosity as to what you might have said if left unhindered.”

Will arches his eyebrows and lengthens his words, dragging his sentence out slow. “If you were so curious, you could have instructed your lawyer to question me more thoroughly.”

Hannibal’s lips thin and stretch in the barest intimation of a smile. “My curiosity didn’t extend so far as to override the advice of one of the best defence attorneys in the state.”

Will’s muscles pull taut again, the old anger lurking within the pool, never too deep to break the surface. “I never imagined it would.” Self-protection is one of Hannibal’s defining traits, allowing him to befriend Will and care for him, then imprison him in this place in conditions far worse than any Hannibal has been forced to tolerate.

Although Hannibal has tolerated them for far longer. There’s nobody working from the outside on his behalf.

There shouldn’t be. He’s gotten exactly what he deserves.

“Goodbye, Doctor Lecter.” Will turns and walks to the door, his shoulders loose, his strides steady and purposeful, but not rushed. 

He won’t give Hannibal any more ground. He’s not coming here again.

This time the door behaves as it should; it’s exactly where it should be, a perfectly normal door, waiting for him to pass through and close it behind him, to seal away more pieces of his life with brick and locks and keys.

Hannibal’s wrong. Will doesn’t need him, not for this, not for anything. He’d want a spoon with a handle as long as Archimedes’ lever to accept an invitation to the devil’s table again.

He knows the Dragon well enough by now – he’s _seen_ him. He knows his weaknesses, his pressure points, how to provoke him into atypical reaction. 

He can make a plan entirely his own.


	4. Chapter 4

The courtroom is eerily quiet. 

The gallery’s packed full, heavy with press and whichever curious members of the public managed to get a seat for today. There are the legal teams, the stenographer, the security, the judge. There’s Hannibal, sitting upright with his shackles discreetly hidden beneath the desk, his face expressing faint disinterest in this entire charade, while his eyes feed keenly on Will.

Will knows it all without looking at him. He chooses not to look at him. 

With this many people, there should be coughs and shuffling, the clearing of throats, the steady murmur of whispered conversations. Instead, everyone is still, suspended, waiting for the words that will follow the routine of swearing in.

The state’s attorney’s shoes tap along the polished floor, the sound resonating through the expanse of hollow space until she comes to a halt before the witness stand. She pauses for dramatic effect, as if this circus needed any more theatrics.

She angles her head towards him, and the room itself inhales. 

“Mister Graham, would you describe for the court the events that happened after you were abducted in Florence and found yourself at Muskrat Farm?”

The chair beneath him is solid, and he breathes past the collar and tie clutching at his throat. His fingers stretch across the fabric of his suit, spreading wide over his thighs. He knows this. “I was suffering from a head injury and I was under the influence of opiates and other drugs administered to me, first by Doctor Lecter and then by Mason Verger’s staff. My recall during that time is intermittent.”

The state’s attorney nods her understanding, her face poised in a perfect facsimile of sympathy as she presses for more. “Do you remember any reason offered by Mason Verger as to why he abducted Doctor Lecter and yourself?”

Will’s face twists, a deliberate manipulation of muscles that flows from relived horror to tragic ruefulness. “I remember several. Some of them might have occurred in reality, others could easily have been drug-induced hallucinations.” A moment’s hesitation, a quick grimace. The crowds came here to be entertained, and a live performance is what they’ll get, the distilled essence of drama. “I would be the very definition of an unreliable witness if I tried to differentiate between the two.”

“I appreciate how difficult this must be for you.” His scene partner pauses again, dipping her head; a strand of hair falls forward past her ear before she straightens up and sweeps it back, professionalism restored. She times it beautifully, but this is what she does, every day, acts out a role to sell her tale to a jury. “Mister Graham, are you aware of any reasons Mason Verger may have had for abducting Doctor Lecter and yourself?”

“Objection.” The call from Hannibal’s table of lawyers is immediate, ringing clear over the low hum of the air conditioners. “Council is asking the witness to speculate.”

“Your Honour, Mister Graham is a recognised expert in the field of behavioural science, with a focus on interpreting the motivations of violent men. I’m asking for his professional analysis in the regrettable absence of Mister Verger’s testimony.”

The judge looks back and forth between opposing lawyers, briefly considering. “I’ll allow it. You may answer the question, Mister Graham.”

Will straightens in his chair and raises his eyes behind his glasses, scanning deliberately over the ranks of the jurors, holding steady on each gaze that meets his own. “Mason Verger was a narcissist and a sociopath. That’s not my personal assessment, that’s the professional opinion noted in the records of more than one of his therapists.” Whatever else comes out of this farce, it will be a matter of public record now, a fact. Margot has weathered her very personal testimony, and Will gets to put the official stamp on it. Everybody will know that Mason Verger was a twisted, vicious sadist. “Over a period of three decades, he tortured his sister both psychologically and physically, and he exhibited the same behaviour towards the defenceless children who were unfortunate enough to cross his path.” 

He takes a sip of his water, lets it linger in his mouth before he swallows; the focus of every mind in the room sits like a weighted presence inside his own. “If he were looking to exercise those tendencies further, without the need for any form of self-restraint, it would be convenient to do so upon someone who was already designated as missing, and last seen on a different continent.” He tilts his head, and finally allows the smile to edge onto his lips like the curve of a blade. “It would also have at least partially satisfied his narcissism to exercise power over someone as notorious as Hannibal the Cannibal.”

He has to look then, to see, to observe Hannibal’s reaction to that ridiculous moniker falling from Will’s lips. Hannibal’s mouth is slightly open, his tongue a hint of soft, pink moisture within the darkness; his eyes drink down every inch and moment of Will, a black hole’s gravity sucking at him from across the courtroom.

Hannibal’s ebon nature swirls from his pupils and begins to manifest into reality, creeping slow across his form. His skin darkens and shrinks tighter around the bones of his skull, his hair retreating into the leathery sheen. And from the top of his skull, two antlers sprout, branching and spreading upwards, ever higher towards the buzz of the fluorescents, a crown of twisted onyx.

He’s sitting there, fully visible in front of everyone as exactly what he is – a beast, magnificent and terrible, a creature of whimsy and will, and utterly unmistakable. Hannibal the Cannibal.

“Objection. Hannibal the Cannibal is a trademark and protected as a form of property.”

Will’s awareness is jolted further along the defendant’s bench, where Hannibal’s lawyer suddenly looks and sounds exactly like Frederick Chilton. He’s preening himself before the room’s attention, a smile spread wide and smug above his chin.

When did Chilton get a law degree? It’s an odd choice of career move, but at least he’ll make a better attorney than a psychiatrist. Self-aggrandising and manipulative traits work for the role.

Will rises from his chair and leans forward into the room, his hands resting on the pale wood that frames the stand. “Is my use of your catchphrase the only objection you have, Frederick?”

The smile falls away from Chilton’s face, his eyes narrowing into a laser stare. “Hardly. I have others, as you well know.”

Chilton starts transforming himself now, the strands of his hair peeling back, and he’s blackening almost as Hannibal did before him, but instead of shrinking down, his skin is rising and blistering and _melting_ from him. His clothes and integument peel away to expose muscle and tendon amid the heavy stench of fat dripping onto a barbecue’s flames, and his lipless mouth draws back from bared teeth, his throat opening into a single, endless, rasping scream….

Will wakes to an empty hotel room, filled only with the buzz of traffic on the interstate, a steady hum and vibration even at this hour. The clock tells him it’s three-fifteen.

The image of Chilton as he’d seen him at the hospital lingers long after his dream. He realises he’s not sweating or breathing in an unusual way. His heart rate is perfectly steady.

He wriggles onto his side, shifting weight from the last of the bruises left by the Dragon when he tossed him into the elevator, and he wonders which of them will take the next move.


	5. Chapter 5

He goes to see Hannibal, after the Dragon’s suicide, for one final visit. He doesn’t go to say goodbye. He goes to make a point.

The point isn’t that Will won. He can’t claim that, not with everything he’s pulled together in the last three years now lying scattered and broken around him. But Hannibal didn’t win either. All his plotting and his manipulations, arranging the people around him like a gleeful child lining up his toy soldiers for death, and he still didn’t win.

That’s how it always ends, with them. All they do is destroy, and every time they come together, both of them are left looking out over the ruins alone.

Will’s spent most of his life alone. He can live that way again.

*****

The Dragon, as it turns out, isn’t dead. He’s very much alive, and still shaping Will into his plans.

Will wouldn’t play along with Hannibal’s manipulations, his deceptions. He won’t be falling meekly into line for any other killer.

Will’s last plan had worked – not, admittedly, exactly as he’d thought it might, but Jack had intended to use Will as Dragon bait, and he still has his lips and his skin and his spine all intact. It was effective enough.

He can make another plan. An entirely selfish one. He’ll get what he wants, and as a bonus he can simultaneously save the world from the Dragon. 

And Molly and Walter too. They’ll be safe after this. Safe from… everyone.

There’s no advantage to it, he knows. It’s all degrees of disadvantage. Exactly how he and Hannibal have always been.

*****

The police car’s rich with the stench of blood; Will has the window cracked open, but it barely helps. He’s being driven to a mysterious destination in a stolen vehicle by a serial murderer, and the plan’s only veered a little way off course.

He hadn’t anticipated crashing into a ditch, and if things had gone perfectly, he wouldn’t be turning his face into the biting stream of air with a dead blow hammer tapping rhythmically inside the bones of his skull. But the play’s still following the outline of his script, and the setting isn’t important, only the drawing together of characters for the final act.

The house above the cliff is all glass and minimalist modernity – not what anyone familiar with the Baltimore house would expect from Hannibal Lecter, but that and the isolated location are precisely why Hannibal chose it. 

They’re standing on the edge, and hearing Abigail’s name spoken in Hannibal’s softly clipped accent still hurts, even four years later.

Will drags his eyes away from the drop, from the restless surging of the sea. Wonders briefly if his companion said her name knowingly, weaponised, but Hannibal’s staring out across the endless ocean, not searching for Will’s reaction. “And now you’re here with me.”

“And the bluff is still eroding.” 

Will knows exactly how long it’s been since Hannibal last saw a horizon, and he shivers as another piece of his own bluff fragments and falls away.

Hannibal walks back to the door of the house, and Will lingers a few moments more in the soothing draw of the sea before he follows him.

The interior looks like a haunting, inhabited by ghostly impressions of furniture shrouded in an expanse of white sheets. A house stalled in time, waiting for a past and a family, a dream many years lost.

Hannibal blends right in, his clothes as white as the surroundings; he’s been suspended too, existing in a loop of days and years, changeless with no meaning.

Things are going to start changing now.

Hannibal reaches for the corners of one of the sheets, whisking it away to reveal a perfectly polished dining table with ornately carved chairs. He folds it, quickly and meticulously, a habit not lost through his years in a cell, and Will’s mind flickers to a vision of him in a beautifully pressed dress shirt and waistcoat instead of a prison outfit, his hair lengthening to fall soft over his ears. 

More of their history seeps through this place with every passing moment, and Will blinks and drags himself back into the present, into what’s waiting. “The Dragon will follow us here,” he says. Hannibal’s made no mention of him since they left the van, only his vague musings on mortality and the temporary nature of the world. 

Hannibal looks back over his shoulder, already working on a second sheet. “I would expect no less of him. He understands technology and how to twist its uses to his advantage.”

“You don’t seem too concerned about that.”

“His attack isn’t imminent, Will,” Hannibal says, his arms still looping the fabric into folds without guidance from his eyes. “His military background has taught him caution and strategy. He’ll scout this place thoroughly for any evidence of an FBI trap before he comes calling.”

“And when he does?”

“Any strategies of ours must by necessity be reactive, since he will have the opening move.”

Strategies, plural, Will notes, and there’s a sharp kick of guilt within his chest. Hannibal isn’t making the assumption that he and Will are playing towards the same endgame.

Hannibal’s hands halt their motion, the lines of his face deepening with that familiar hint of smile. “You can be too much like our Dragon in some ways, Will. You’ve always been far more comfortable with advance arrangements over improvisation. Your collusion with the prosecutor at my trial must have suited you very well.”

Will runs his tongue over dry lips. It’s not a topic he’s pleased to return to, but it might be better than having Hannibal dig deeper into his plans surrounding the Dragon. “It would have been difficult for me to describe what transpired around Mason Verger without implicating myself to some degree. I’m sure you can understand my reluctance on that front.”

“Very much so, as I can with Randall Tier,” Hannibal says. “Yet there were other activities you might have commented on without inherent risk to yourself.”

“And there were other witnesses who were able to describe them well enough.” Margot and Alana had been the prosecutor’s dream team; they were deeply motivated to ensure Hannibal could never walk free again. “I had more than enough attention from the media, without inviting extra interest through lurid courtroom accounts.” 

Hannibal raises his eyebrows, his lips curved in dry amusement. “Yes, I’m sure it must have been quite terrible for you.”

Will in his house in Wolf Trap, surrounded by his devoted dogs and a vicious press-pack, while Hannibal sat chained in a cell. “I’ve had it worse,” he admits. It hangs between them as both acknowledgement and accusation, the reminder of Will’s own time as an inmate of the BSHCI.

Hannibal sets the folded sheets down on top of the newly uncovered dresser. “I’m going to take a shower and change into something a little fresher. If you wish to do the same, there are clothes to fit you in the second bedroom, on the left.” His eyes drop to the hem of Will’s pants. “I apologise if there’s a faint odour of mothballs, but they are at least guaranteed to be free of bloodstains.”

Hannibal has clothes here, bought for Will. Clothes from four years ago, when he believed they were going to run away together, that they could be a family, the two of them and Abigail. He’d prepared everything in case they had to leave in a hurry, without time for Will to go to Wolf Trap and pack.

He genuinely had believed. All of it. And despite everything he is, he’d wanted it.

Despite everything since, he still does. 

The void’s always out there, calling, tugging at them both.

*****

The Dragon rears his head to strike and they plunge themselves into violence. Then they plunge together into the ocean. 


	6. Chapter 6

The bed’s a double, not an easy fit for two adults. They’re always touching somewhere, at elbows and bent knees, and when they move to relieve aches and stiffness, they both have to shuffle and adjust.

Will’s not getting much sleep anyway, with the stress and the lingering pain. He’d gotten used to sharing a bed with Molly, and he’s… okay with this.

In the first days, Hannibal had barely moved at all, he’d been so ill and heavily drugged. Through all the years Will’s known him, he’s always manifested an undeniable energy behind the taut coils of stillness, never needed motion to unleash his vitality. While he lay pale and eminently fragile, his eyes glassy and vague when they opened at all, Will found he much preferred to feel him stir.

The last of the light faded hours ago, and the rain’s rattling against the glass, driven by the wind. The heat’s already seeping from the room, cold draughts swirling through any number of gaps, and Will tugs the corners of the comforter inwards around them. He wriggles onto his left side, one arm sandwiched between them and his shin pressed up against Hannibal’s. It will be a while longer before he’s sleeping on his right cheek or shoulder.

“Are you comfortable, Will?” Hannibal’s a shape and warmth and pressure in the darkness, no features to reveal his thoughts, but there’s a level of concern in Hannibal’s voice that’s both new and old. Will recalls it from early in their relationship, when he was suffering blackouts and seizures, and he’s still not sure how much from back then was genuine and how much the game. 

He’s certain now, and his lips start to curve before he answers. “Good enough.”

“You’re not sleeping.”

“Neither are you,” Will points out.

“Since I grew capable of retaining consciousness, I find I relish my time awake.” The familiar dry humour slinks beneath Hannibal’s words, and its return seeps into Will as a warm, spreading contentment.

“Your body needs sleep to heal.” 

“My mind needs stimulation to prevent untimely degradation.”

Will huffs out a breath and resigns himself to one of _those_ conversations. “So, tell me what’s stimulating you.”

“You are, of course.” Hannibal’s reply is immediate, and not even slightly arch. “You’ve been my predominant source of interest for some years.”

Will’s face twists, and the pull on his cheek makes him wish he had better control over his facial muscles. It’s probably years too late to train himself into a Hannibal-like mask. “If I ask what you’re contemplating about me, I know I’m going to regret it.”

“Since you’re clearly curious, I will tell you anyway.” Hannibal’s gentle teasing is the most natural mood he’s displayed since he woke, and it bleeds through into Will, infectious and welcome. “I was musing on your performance in the courthouse.”

“You do seem to keep asking about that,” Will says, his voice stretching into a slow drawl.

“It was the last sighting I had of you, and I found myself with much time to reflect upon it,” Hannibal says quietly. “I might stop questioning, if I thought I’d ever reached the truth.”

Will flexes the fingers of one hand, a gentle brush against Hannibal’s ribs. “You already have,” he tells him. “I haven’t been lying.”

A shift, and Hannibal’s head turns on the pillow to face him, though he won’t be able to see, any more than Will can. “A Hindu monk named Swami Vivekananda said, ‘Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.’” His voice is low, soft, and honestly considering. “How many more truths are yet concealed within you, I wonder?”

Will sighs, the air leaving him long and slow. He slides his hand upwards, fingers settling around the muscle of Hannibal’s bicep, still firm after three years in a cell and eight days laid up in a bed. “Your defence against the death penalty was that you were insane,” he says. “If I’d testified on everything, if I’d stood up in the witness box and told the court what happened in all the tiny details, it would have been obvious to everyone that you’re not. That you knew exactly what you were doing and you enjoyed every second of it.”

The slightest of pauses, enough for a hundred thoughts to sweep through the spaces of Hannibal’s mind. “You were reluctant to risk my life.”

“I wanted you gone.” Will’s fingers tighten, almost involuntarily, clamping down into skin and flesh. “I wanted peace, and not to be drugged or beaten or shot. I didn’t want you dead. Not then.”

“Your actions last week suggest the urge has returned.” There’s no tension in Hannibal’s body, no resistance in the muscle beneath Will’s grasping hand, but it bleeds through his words all the same.

“The… impulse to kill you has been a periodically recurring element of our relationship.” Sitting on a prison cot in the shadow of the bars, sustained by the ferocity of his rage. The dim winter light of a kitchen, the stark white glare from the fridge, the metallic familiarity of a weapon tight within his grip. Will can feel it all, rich and savage and reaching. But he can also put it aside, and make another choice.

Hannibal’s other hand reaches for Will’s, their fingers resting lightly intertwined. “I hope the impulse is now finally laid to rest.”

Not a question posed lightly, or one to answer that way either. “I think that’s going to depend on what provocation you offer.” It’s the only honest answer Will can find.

“I have no desire to antagonise you, Will.”

Hannibal’s more questionable Will-related actions have never been motivated by a desire to antagonise him. It’s always been something Hannibal considered an unfortunate side-effect, but Will’s tired and it’s not a productive discussion to start. 

He tips his head just enough to press his nose against the faded bruise at Hannibal’s bicep. “Then we should be fine,” he says, and he has to hope it’s true.

*****

The morning light is grey and flat. It creeps around the edges of the faded drapes, enough to lift the sparse surroundings into visibility, but no brightness or colour yet to tempt him into leaving the bed. It’s pleasant to lie for a while and indulge the newly rediscovered sensation of waking naturally, instead of driven from sleep by pain. The air is chill on his face, and Hannibal is heat spread along the length of his back, warm breath at the nape of his neck.

He can tell from the rhythm of that breath that Hannibal’s already awake, and there’s an obvious line of pressure against Will’s thigh through the sweat pants. Hannibal’s awake, and he’s hard, and he’s chosen not to pull away.

Hannibal’s never hidden that his interest in Will goes beyond the intellectual, but he was never direct about it either. Will wriggles over onto his back, his hand sliding onto Hannibal’s hip and pausing there, because he’s not about to grope someone, anyone, without double-checking first. 

It should be tentative, some kind of major step, the first explicitly sexual contact between them, but it’s not. It’s not odd or unexpected that it’s happening, and there’s no surprise in Hannibal’s eyes either. Will’s fingers stretch out further, just brushing along the edge of Hannibal’s erection through the cloth.

“I gather you’re finally back to full health.” He keeps his touch light, suggestive, an offering not a demand.

Hannibal glances downwards, his eyes crinkling in humour. “Full health may be an exaggeration, but it appears I’ve regained basic functionality.”

“I could take the edge off for you,” Will says. “You can just lie back and let me.”

“You don’t have to do that, Will.”

Will pokes his thumb into Hannibal’s hip. “Obviously. I’m offering because I want to.”

Hannibal pushes a hand up over his stomach, lifting the T-shirt above the dressings that conceal the multiple rows of stitches across his abdomen. “I fear I’m not yet healed enough to return the favour.”

Will tilts his head on the pillow and smiles. “It’s not a favour if we both want it.”

Hannibal lifts a hand to Will’s face, stroking softly along his cheek. “Then I see no reason to deny you your wishes.”

Will wriggles himself over and up onto his knees – he can’t do this propped on one elbow, not when his right arm’s still only fit for light duty – and reaches beneath the cloth to curl his fingers around the bulk of Hannibal’s cock.

The skin is smooth beneath his touch, soft over the heavy flush of blood. It’s instantly natural to hold Hannibal this way, the easy fit of him within his grip – the only strangeness is in using his left hand to do it. There’s familiarity in the weight and heat, slightly thicker than his own, but Hannibal’s built bigger everywhere. He presses the fabric away, and the foreskin slides easily beneath his fingers with no need for lube, which is good because there aren’t any sex supplies in this cabin. He keeps the rhythm slow, working the length of Hannibal’s erection, stroking a thumb through the liquid beading at the tip.

“Is this okay?” It’s a morning erection, it should be easy enough for Hannibal to come without Will really working him. He wants this to be casual and relaxing, not something Hannibal has to reach for and tense through his healing abdominals.

“It’s perfect, Will.” Hannibal’s eyes are fixed on him, pupils wide and black, his breath low and rasping. It’s not just something Hannibal’s saying, the needed encouragement for a new lover; for Hannibal it’s perfect because it’s Will. And Will’s known that about him, about them, for years, but it suffuses him now, emphasised by the intimacy of sex. No barriers in the midst of lust, no defences through the flood of hormones, and Will quivers with the full force of Hannibal’s devotion, the purity of himself within Hannibal’s vision, his own cock stiffening to full hardness.

Will’s right arm is limited, but he can reach out and stroke fingers over Hannibal’s balls while he jerks him off. Hannibal’s legs shift and spread, giving him space, and Will presses back further, down over the sensitive skin of his perineum. 

Hannibal’s cock jumps within his hand, and Will strokes him and draws him on, rubbing the sticky damp of pre-come along the ridge below the head. “Will…” Hannibal murmurs his name like benediction, like ecstasy, but his lids never close, always watching, locked onto the sight of Will, his presence. He’s seen Hannibal vulnerable before; he’s seen him damaged and rejected, but this is Hannibal exposing himself voluntarily, opening to let Will see the intensity of his attachment, the raw emotion that’s been driving his actions for years.

It spears into Will, the shock of that love, twisted and possessive, yes, but unquestionably _love_ , and it drags forth its counterpart within him. Not the mirror of empathy, not the intrusion of unwanted, alien thought, but a fierce, clinging need, a long-established slice of himself. He’s buried it and walled it back, encased it within a concrete block, and now it shatters free, bright and undeniable to tighten around his chest and in his throat. And Hannibal’s here with him, connected, tenacious, irrefutable, suspended at Will’s hands until he gasps and trembles and comes in sticky spurts over them both. 

There aren’t any facial tissues in the wobbly nightstand beside the bed, but there’s a glut of first aid supplies, and Will reaches for some sterile gauze pads to wipe them down.

“We’ll need to change my dressings soon,” Hannibal says. There are streaked remnants of come soaking into the bandage around his middle.

“I hope it was worth it,” Will says.

“Very much so.” Hannibal’s fingers are light on Will’s cheek, and a smile teases at his closed lips. His eyes drop to Will’s underwear, stretched and damp over his erection. “Perhaps you should take care of yourself as well.”

He could do that, with Hannibal watching; it would be nice. Or he can wait a few more days, and he can let Hannibal explore him… steer him, share it with him. “Maybe later,” he says, and he sets down the gauze and stretches out alongside him. Hannibal shifts to accommodate him, curling onto his side, and their fingers reach and weave together. 

Molly always liked to cuddle after sex. They’d lie there, spooned together in the darkness, and some of those times Will wasn’t thinking about Molly.

He wonders if Hannibal will be a cuddler, when they’re healed. And then he remembers the cliff (and the kitchen and the rain and the knife and _don’t_ ) and he’s sure he will be.

He looks up into the slant of the roof, at the beams and the rough-hewn wood, hears the first short refrains of birdsong seep in from the woods outside. He’ll get up soon and make breakfast, whatever kind of breakfast he can find in cans. They’ve finished all the eggs Chiyoh left with them – in the first days, they were the easiest thing for Hannibal’s digestion – and Will hasn’t dared consider shopping yet.

His life has changed, and so many things will be different.

Will turns his head towards Hannibal, and Hannibal’s eyes are already there, waiting to find him. 

There’s been so much waiting. Too much. 

He sighs out the breath he’s holding, and draws in a new one to shape the words. “If I’d testified openly, if I’d described to everyone in that courtroom exactly what you did, what we did together… They would have seen that I didn’t hate it, or you.” Will’s fingers tighten around Hannibal’s, a necessary touch and pressure. “They would have seen that I liked it. That I knew it was beautiful.” 

Hannibal returns Will’s grip, his other arm moving between them, fingers spreading across Will’s ribs. “They would have seen past the walls of the fort to its most closely guarded treasure – the resplendence of your true self.”

They wouldn’t have called it resplendence, they would have called it monstrous, but Hannibal believes the word he chose. “You’re the only one who’s ever seen that. You’re the only person I wanted to see.”

“Randall Tier saw you,” Hannibal reminds him, “and Francis too.”

They did, but only at the end. Only in their last few moments when Will held the power and with no urge to stop. “A glimpse, before they passed beyond all understanding.”

Hannibal’s hand moves to cup his face, his palm angling Will’s chin, bringing them closer. “It was a gift you gave them, to see you in all your magnificence, in exchange for the gift they gave to you.”

Will’s lips stretch in a twisted smile, a lingering pull in his cheek as remembrance. “A gift they gave reluctantly, against their will.”

Hannibal’s fingers curl and stroke through the tangle of hair by Will’s ear. “It’s an exchange I would have made gladly.”

Hannibal did offer it, on the cliff. No attempt to counter Will’s push, to regain his balance, just holding them together as they fell. “Perhaps it’s because you offered it that I know I could never want it.” He’s forgiven Hannibal so much by now, he can’t imagine there’ll be a time when he’ll stop.

Hannibal’s face is only inches away, his pupils dilating into shafts of darkness, his breath hovering lightly over Will’s lips. “Can I dare to hope that I will see your radiance again, Will? That I might share the experience as you unleash the fullest extent of your desires?”

The room dissolves when Will blinks, and there’s a knife in his hand, flesh opening ragged as he drags the blade. Blood pooling dark in the moonlight, the scent of it rich in every breath, mingled with the salt-laced air. A windless night, heavy with the panting of their breath and the crunch of glass underfoot, the two of them drawing together, folding into each other, knowing each other amid the rapture of death.

Another blink finds a dim morning in a sparsely furnished cabin, but the mental luxury of _belonging_ survives the transition, undiminished. Despite the residual twinges and the cramped space, he’s more at ease than he’s been since he was maybe six years old.

Of the doubts that still linger, this isn’t one of them. “Yes.” A single word, brimming with certainty, and both of them shiver in shared remembrance, the heightened anticipation of future passions. “You will.”

Hannibal lowers his head and breathes into Will’s hair, and they lie together in the quiet of the dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for reading!
> 
> If you liked this story enough to want to share the love, you can reblog [this post on tumblr](https://murder-husbands-big-bang.tumblr.com/post/641770154977591296/title-a-thousand-truths-author-tiggy-malvern) and tell people about it 💗


End file.
